After their semifinal win over the Kenai Cardinals, the Juneau-Douglas Crimson Bears are on their way to the State Medium Schools Championship Football game this Saturday in Anchorage to take on the Soldotna Stars. It's the fifth time in the team's history that they've had a chance to play in a state title game and they've been practicing hard all week, and needless to say, the excitement level is pretty high.
That level of excitement was apparent in Head Coach Rich Sjoroos.

"Well you know it's a big time for everybody, everybody in the program, all the way from the younger players, the older players and the coaches and the families and the fans and everybody, it's just a great experience for these kids to go up there and get a chance to play a state title game so our focus is just to kind of embrace that whole moment, make sure that we're dialed in, prepared, offense, defense, special teams and just keep everybody building up to the momentum of Saturday and try not to do too much early, make the most of every practice."

Crimson Bears Quarterback Dorian Isaak spoke of what his focus was for the upcoming game. "Focus is just to prepare for the defense, we need to get our offense going, and really get good drives going on offense, that's going to help us a lot in this game so we need to execute and keep the ball out of their hands."

Part of that focus and preparation is to evaluate the opposing team and develop an effective strategy against them, and they've done just that. Dorian elaborated on that thought.

"They've played against the run a lot, so they're really well coached against it, so we're hoping to get a
good pass attack against them, running will also work we have a great running back, Demetrius Campos and then George Sua, and they're real strong running backs and they can carry the team really well too so we'll probably mix it up. And the weather's going to be good so I think maybe a little more passing than we had last week."

Hopefully all the strategy pays off, but according to Coach Sjoroos, in the long run there's something else that this is really all about.

"Fun ride with these kids, fun ride with the coaches and we made it to the finish line, you know and that's something that not every year you get to do is make it all the way to the end and tomorrow night will be our last practice out here, and for those seniors it'll be there last time ever playing on this field with pads on and it's just a great ride for them to make it to the end and I couldn't be happier for them."

Kickoff time for the championship game is this Saturday at noon and can be seen on GCI cable channel one.